


Midsummer's Day Dream

by EmmaDeMarais



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Deviates From Canon, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaDeMarais/pseuds/EmmaDeMarais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a midsummer's day Lyra's dream comes true</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midsummer's Day Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/gifts).



Midsummer’s Day. Lyra had been watching the calendar for weeks, having trouble focusing on her studies knowing that one special day a year was approaching. It felt strange anticipating the most painful day of the year, the day she felt the ache of loss the most profoundly, but it was also the day she knew she was closest to Will. She couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same.

“You’re thinking about Will again.” Pantalaimon slipped between her and the book she’d been mostly ignoring.

“I can’t help it, Pan. It’ll be time to leave soon.” She let out a noise of frustration and closed the ancient leather-bound volume. “I can’t concentrate.”

“We could leave early,” Pantalaimon suggested. “You’re not going to get any work done before we leave anyway and it is a nice day out.”

“Might as well.” Lyra closed the book and lugged it over to the bookshelf where it belonged, sliding it into the sole open slot. “Today’s going to hurt no matter where we spend it so we might as well be somewhere beautiful while we wait.”

*

The walk to the Botanic Garden had been slow and leisurely with plenty of time to enjoy the flowers in bloom along the way.

“Do you think the trees in the mulefa’s world are recovering now that the Dust problem’s been solved?”

“I’m sure they are,” Pantalaimon soothed. “It’s been a few years. The new grove around the window for the dead must have at least tall saplings by now.” Pantalaimon curled himself around her neck. “We did a good thing, freeing them and finding them a beautiful place to rejoin the universe.”

“Yeah, we did…” Lyra let her head hang down, the cost of what they’d done unnecessary to speak between them.

As they approached the bench, she slowed, as if reluctant to begin their annual ritual that was so quickly completed.

“I’m glad we picked this place, this time.” Pantalaimon frolicked in the grass nearby, not wanting to let people know how far away he could get as her daemon now. “I already loved it here, but now I love it more knowing it’s the closest Kirjava is to me.” He looked around. “She could be making her way through this very same grass in Will’s Oxford right now. My paws may step where her paws step.”

Lyra sat down on the bench reluctantly. “Pan, last year… I… Something happened. I didn’t talk to you about it, but...”

“You heard Will’s voice.”

Lyra looked up, surprised. “You heard it too? I was sure it was just my brain playing tricks on me!”

“I thought we were making it up because we wanted it so badly,” Pantalaimon admitted. “I even thought I saw…”

“A shimmer! In the air!” Lyra leapt to her feet. “So it really happened!”

“We can’t know that,” Pantalaimon urged. “I mean, any hallucination you have, I’m involved as well.”

Lyra sank back down to the bench, defeated. “I just kept thinking there had to be some way for Will to reach me. Making us stay apart after all we’ve done? It’s cruel.”

They rested in the sun for a while in silence afterwards, Pantalaimon weaving his way through the grass and flowers as the time until midday passed.

As the hour began to chime in the distant clock tower, excitement gripped Lyra so hard she felt it as a pain in her chest. As the last bell’s sound faded into history and nothing happened, the sense of loss and anguish grew inside her. 

“Oh, Will…” she lamented. “How can you be so close and impossibly far away? It’s not right. It’s not fair.”

“Lyra!”

She turned to where Pantalaimon was stock still in the grass, staring behind her. When she turned to look she saw the same sort of shimmer as she had the last year, a sort of golden haze the color of Dust forming an oval in the air nearby.

Her mouth hung open in surprise and she watched as the oval grew larger and an opening seemed to emerge and grow from its center.

As the haze cleared, she could see two people on the other side and one cat.

“Will?” His name came out more breath than sound, afraid as she was to give voice to her heart’s deepest wish.

“It can’t be,” she heard Pantalaimon say beside her.

Just as she was growing certain this was just another hallucination Kirjava leaped through the portal and landed, warm and furry, in her arms.

She gasped aloud in shock and at the sensation of having her hands on Will’s daemon again.

“Kirjava? How?”

“Hello Lyra!” The voice calling through the portal was recognizable, but it wasn’t Will’s. It was Dr. Mary Malone. “Can you hear us?”

“Yes,” she stammered, shaken, while Pantalaimon approached Kirjava as if she were as impossible as her presence truly was to them. Once they were both on Lyra’s lap Kirjava rubbed her head under Pantalaimon’s chin in an affectionate greeting. “But how?”

“That’s the harder question.” Lyra snapped to attention at the sound of Will’s voice. “Let’s make sure it works first.” As she gazed in rapt attention, Will himself stepped through the portal. He was tall now, so much taller than she remembered, and had a dark scruffy beard covering his handsome face.

“It’s you, really you…” she murmured, not caring if she made any sense. The daemons moved off her lap to the bench, allowing her to stand as Will held out his hand to her.

“I’m still yours,” he told her, eyes never leaving hers. “Are you still mine? Do you still want me?”

“Yes,” Lyra replied breathlessly. “Yes!” She pulled him in for a kiss that was both familiar and all new, their older selves so different in body yet still harboring the same love in their souls for each other. To feel him warm and alive against her more mature body sent thrills along her senses, her skin humming with the electricity of anticipation.

“I never stopped thinking about you,” Will whispered in her ear as he held her.

Lyra couldn’t decide whether to laugh, cry or kiss Will again so she did all three until she was breathless.

Turning to Mary, whose face was still within the portal, she asked, “I thought I saw a shimmer last year. Was that you?”

“Not me,” she said. “Will told me he saw a shimmer last year and called out to you so I started investigating this spot. It ends up that since you two started meeting Dust has built up here in completely unheard of levels. Will agreed to an experiment so…” She looked a bit sheepish. “Okay, I probably should admit that while I hadn’t planned on it, I rebuilt the computer to talk to Dust. I needed to know what was going on, especially if it might be dangerous.”

“Xaphania had told us there were other ways angels moved between worlds that didn’t involve the knife,” Will explained. “Apparently Dust can make its own portals, but only if it’s strong enough. That’s how angels cross between worlds without doing any damage.”

“I figured if you meeting annually built up that much Dust,” Mary continued. “More visits might generate enough for a portal.”

“I came almost every day for months,” he admitted. “In the hopes of building up enough Dust for a portal.”

“And I measured the increase. I used the computer to ask the Dust if what we were doing was a problem. They said it wasn’t. They said they never meant for you two to stay apart forever. So while everyone from Will’s father to angels told us you two had to stay apart, it was the Dust itself that seemed to want to put you two back together.”

“That’s right,” Will told her. “I didn’t make the portal. Dust made it for us.”

“Dust wants us to be together,” Lyra marveled. “But what about the sickness? The fact that no one can stay out of their world for ten years without getting sick and dying?”

“I asked the Dust about that. It seems that the only people to try it were the scientists at Cittàgazze and a few individuals like Sir Charles Latrom and Will’s father. None of them were married or had a mate. It seems that the only way to counter the effects of being out of world is to generate more Dust through love.”

“I’m pretty confident we have enough love to make it work,” Will told her, enfolding her in his arms. “We made enough Dust to help save the worlds, I think it owes us a little of the extra to live a happy life.”

“But in which world? Do I have to leave my alethiometer studies, or you, your mom?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Mary explained. “The Dust controls this portal so it’s not a danger to the Dust. You can spend as much time as you want in each world without negatively impacting the other.”

“Mary helped me move my mom into a long term care facility where I can visit her, but professionals take care of her. So, if you want me to come here to start…”

Lyra grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close.

“Get over here!” She kissed him, pouring her passion and desire into it, making sure he knew just how desperately she wanted them to be together again.

Mary laughed as the daemons chased each other in a circle around the entwined lovers.

“Give me a call when you’re back in my world, you two. I deserve a hug too, you know!” She tossed a small duffle bag through the portal then waved. “See you soon!”

“Bye!” Lyra rushed to say before the swirl of gold particles dissolved into nothingness, erasing Mary’s image from the summer air. She shook her head in amazement. “Wait, did that just happen? Are you really here? Am I dreaming?”

“Yes, yes and no?” Will offered. “If it helps, I’m still kind of stunned that it really worked. I mean, you should have seen me when the Dust told Mary and I that it wanted you and I together and could really make it happen.” He clutched her to his chest, burying a hand in her hair as he murmured into her neck. “It seemed too good to be true, but here you are.”

They held each other for a long moment, ending it with a languid kiss. 

“We don’t have to rush those anymore, do we?” Lyra asked.

“No, but we do have some catching up to do,” Will said with a grin. He reached over and grabbed his duffle bag. “Hey, Pan,” he called to her daemon with a cock of his head. “Good to see you.”

“That’s an understatement,” Pantalaimon replied from where he was curled up in the grass nuzzling Kirjava. “We never thought we’d see you here.”

“Well, here I am.” Will squeezed Lyra’s hand. “How about you show me your Oxford?”

“Our Oxford now,” Lyra corrected him, tightening her excited grip on his hand even as she felt a quickening in her already rapidly beating heart. “Welcome to our world.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta.


End file.
